Forbes
Blockchain’s greatest potential to deliver business value is in manufacturing. Increasing visibility across every area of manufacturing—starting with suppliers, strategic sourcing, procurement and supplier quality, to shop floor operations including machine-level monitoring and service—blockchain can enable entirely new manufacturing business models. 

Industrial Machinery Digest
Today’s machine tool builder has read many articles and technical papers about the emerging concept of digitalization. Here are three ways OEM engineering and management teams can view this technology and its impact, as it shapes the production and sales process of the future.

Diesel Progress
United Stars Inc. has acquired Precision Gears Inc., a nearly 100-year old producer of customer gears for agriculture, power transmission and industrial applications. 

Manufacturing.net
No one needs to tell manufacturers that they need to become more nimble and efficient. This is especially true for process manufacturing companies that operate expensive assets. In addition to the regular onslaught of business pressures, manufacturers are also facing the prospect of a global trade war. In response, manufacturers are now looking to artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) for help.

All 3DP
The Japanese electronics manufacturer Mitsubishi Electric Corporation has announced the development of a new metal additive manufacturing process. Dubbed as “dot forming technology,” the technique combines laser, CNC and CAM technologies to produce near-net metal parts.

Manufacturing.net
The executive director of the Georgia Ports Authority says the agency plans a big expansion that will double the Port of Brunswick's capacity for handling automobile imports and exports.

Bloomberg
ABB Ltd. will invest $150 million to build a robotics factory in Shanghai, as the Swiss manufacturer capitalizes on China’s rising consumption and aspiration to transform into a technology pioneer. This new factory will set out to “shape the next generation of manufacturing, the next generation of capacity,” Chief Executive Officer Ulrich Spiesshofer said in a recent interview.

AGMA
Explore gear failure analysis in this hands-on seminar where students not only see slides of failed gears but can hold and examine those same field samples close up. Experience the use of microscope and take your own contact pattern from field samples.

New Atlas
Robots are getting smaller and smaller, from the size of bugs down to tiny bead-shaped robots that could one day swim through the body to monitor health or deliver medication. MIT engineers recently managed to create cell-sized robots that could collect data about their environment, but were a little tricky to manufacture. Now, the team has found a way to mass produce these synthetic cells (syncells) through controlled fracturing of graphene.

AGMA
Learn to make use of steel properties in a system solution and understand the potential that different steel options can offer for their various applications. Explore how performance of the material and thus the component and system depends on how the steel is produced.

World Highways
Hitachi Construction Machinery is partnering with Kiesel Technologie Entwicklung (KTEG) to develop electric construction machinery for sale in Europe. Kiesel is one of Hitachi’s European distributors and this agreement will also include developing special application products for the European market.

Canadian Metalworking
Seco Tools is expanding its customer service capabilities through a partnership with MachineMetrics, a supplier of manufacturing analytics systems. Seco plans to use the MachineMetrics industrial internet of things (IIoT) platform and its manufacturing analytics applications as a cornerstone in its expansion into new technology services. With the data provided, Seco can help its customers make data-driven decisions.

New Equipment Digest
Chemical engineer-turned action icon Dolph Lundgren’s latest role is whipping Volvo Construction Equipment’s line of excavators—weighing 1 to 95 tons—into shape. The pairing of Sweden’s toughest, most resilient machine and Volvo is quite possibly the most satisfying construction equipment video since the classic Chinese front end loader brawl of 2016.

Design News
At the IoT World Congress in Barcelona last week, the Industrial Internet Consortium announced the IIC Resource Hub, a free interface to IoT resources developed by the IIC. The hub includes a web-based tool called IIoT Project Explorer, which guides users through the analysis and planning of their own IIoT projects. 

Design & Manufacturing
Industrial additive manufacturing (AM) has one overriding goal today: To increase productivity while significantly reducing cost per part, which sounds like a tall order. In addition, new AM solutions must be able to integrate into current production while being ready—the word “future-proofed” is sometimes used—for up-and-coming applications. 

The Boss Magazine
Additive manufacturing, a layer-based manufacturing process similar to 3D printing but with a focus on an end product rather than a prototype, appears to have finally reached the right combination of technological advancement and technical know-how to forever alter the landscape of the aerospace industry. 

Engineering.com
Electronics is getting to be such a big part of a product’s design that a purely mechanical product has become a rarity in our modern world. But the interplay between mechanical design teams and electronics design teams can be anything but straight forward. It is a situation that often delays successful product launches.

IndustryWeek
America is essentially in an infrastructure collapse that is having dire effects on manufacturing. Crumbling water systems that are unreliable can shut down production lines. Congested highways mean late deliveries, production loss, increased fuel and wage costs and excessive wear on assets. Port congestion, lock delays and the penalty associated with not having infrastructure in place to handle larger ships make American products more expensive.

Digital Energy
Renowned turbine manufacturer Siemens Gamesa Renewable Energy SA has won a contract to supply Southern Power’s wind project in Kansas. The Reading Wind project will feature two types of Siemens Gamesa turbines and will have a total capacity of 198.5 MW.